Previously, the concept of batching has been used in a variety of contexts. For example, batching has been used by operating systems in which batch jobs have been submitted to the operating system for scheduling by the system. In another example, batching has been used in parallel processing systems, in which a job is set to execute on a plurality of processors within the system.
However, a need still exists for a batching mechanism in which a plurality of requests can be batched into a single request for submission to a group of processes executing within a distributed computing environment. A further need exists for a batching mechanism that enables individual process groups executing within the system to determine whether it wishes to accept batched requests or to receive each request serially. A yet further need exists for a batching mechanism that allows each process group to select batching for certain types of requests, while other requests are presented serially.